Little-Acorn

I'm putting a Mini-ITX system with TV-out into a small plane, to be a moving-map GPS and an MP3 player. I had a Palm Tungsten T3 there, but it was almost unreadable when the sun was out and bright.

Biggest screen I can install, is about a 6" or 7" LCD. Can anyone recommend one that's bright enough to see clearly in sunlight? Either NTSC input or RGB, is OK.

Thanks all!

Danceheaven

Your choice any piece of crap u can find will do for RGB or NTSC/PAL, but if you want to actually read text on the screen save ur self hardwork, wasted time and hassel buy a lilliput or Xenarc with VGA, and touchscreen.

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Little-Acorn

My apologies, maybe I wasn't clear. Most LCD screens I've seen, wash out completely in bright sunlight. My Tungsten T3 did, and it had one of the better screens I thought. Surely most of the "any piece of crap" screens would fall into this category.

Anyone know of a screen WITH HIGH BRIGHTNESS OUTPUT that is easily viewable in bright sunlight? I don't need touchscreen, and don't really need text viewing - just the big block letters showing speed, altitude, heading etc., and the moving map display.

Hope this helps....

EBFoxbat

No such thing

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devin99

I had a Clarion WMA5894 before and it was 100% viewable in direct sunlight, good little screen

Little-Acorn

Hmmm, just did a Google search on that, no hits. Odd, usually you get SOMETHING. Also searched just WMA5894, still zippo. Out of production, long time?

Change

Most handhelds use a transflective screen (see a definition at http://www.phonescoop.com/glossary/term.php?gid=120 ), the Lilliput/Xenarc and other monitor LCDs are transmissive and won't look the same in direct sunlight.

jcdillin

Too bad you dont have the room for a tablet PC you can pick them up with sunlight readable screens.

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devin99

Sorry typo VMA5894

mushin

There's absolutely such things

I've got a convertable, so I've done quite a bit of research into this. The short answer is, they exist, there aren't many in that size range, and they're friggin expensive.

Now for the long answer. True sunlight visible displays come in several flavors. A couple people have mentioned transflective. Tranflective is a good option because it's visible in both sunlight and at night. The primary problem with transflective is availability - there are very few transflective displays in this size range. The reason is quite simply the market: 6" - 7" is too large for PDS, and too small for laptops, which makes for very low demand. I did find a 7.2" Kyocera unit, but it is dual-scan, not TFT. It does have the advantage of being relatively cheap though, around $200+ IIRC. There's also a Sharp model made for car navigation system, but its resolution is only 400x240, and costs $600+ at single unit prices. Niether of these prices include controller or inverter.

Another similar option is reflective. Reflective has the best sunlight visibility, but to view in the dark, you need a front light. Many cellphones and PDAs are reflective, though transflective is gaining in popularity. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of even a single reflective color LCD in this size.

Finally, there's high-bright. This is by far most common implementation of sunlight visible displays in this size range. It's not cheap though. The minimum for true sunlight readability starts somewhere around 700 - 800 nits. By comparison, the lilliputs/xenarcs that are popular around here are less than half that. And that's minimum - 1000+ nits is preferable, and you can find displays going 1500 nits and up. High bright kits can go easily for over a grand, sometimes several for the really bright ones. They're also going to need to be *way* dialed down for night use, though this can be done with PWM and not that big of a deal.

So what did I do? I was originally going to go with the Kyocera, but couldn't find an appropriete compatible controller for it. I eventually found a company in California that does tranflective conversions on transmissive displays. I just shipped out an 6.5" NEC LCD to them today. The whole thing (LCD + conversion) is costing me a bundle, but it's still less than most of the high-bright units. I should get it back in about 2 weeks, and I'll post my results for those that are interested (fingers crossed, it better be good! )

Man that was a long post.

DaRacerz

What mushin said. Although I have never seen a transflective work in sunlight, but it basically uses the sunrayes to help make the screen brighter and easier to see. Haven't seen it myself, so i really dunno.

Now, since you asked for this, heres a link to a supposibly sunlight readable module. 1200nits. http://www.tridentdisplays.co.uk/pro...sunlight.shtml

Last I e-mail them, the price is off the roof almost $1000 including all transportation fee's and stuff to the US.

alti

I just spent a good amount of time on this problem as well, and I have not yet implemented my installation in the car so I cannot yet personally vouch for it, but from everything I have read I am sure it will work fine.

The screen I got is called an Allbrite. It is around 1000-1200 nits and 10.4 inches with 800 x 600. I got the screen controller all of the backlights installed and both backlight inverters for $385... I am going to get a touch screen kit for about $125.. all said and done just over $500.. It was by far the best price I could find.

I dont beleive that Allbrites are produced anymore and it took some searching to find mine... I started on this board.

Good luck in your search...

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lookinco

Hey Alti, I just got my Allbrite screen and controller a week ago. I hooked everything up but I coudln't get the VGA image to work, only the RCA. Which controller are you using? I got my Signet controller from MotorCity which he tested with no problem. He told me that I need to ground the LCD panel with the controller but I still coudln't get VGA to work.

How's the Allbrite? does it have a wide view angle? When I was testing mine with the RCA connection, the angle was quite narrow and the screen was flickering pretty bad.

Please help.

alti

You know, I had not actually tried to hook mine up yet, as i have been doing a lot of overtime at work and started new classes on Mon and Tue. So after reading your post i thought hmmm, let me plug it all in and try. Well I got the same results... Not sure why, set my resulotion down to 800 x 600 and 16 bit color on my laptop set everything up and hit the LCD/CRT switch on the laptop and got a white line refreshing down the screen. Tried the RCA input and it worked (looked like crap but worked) I tried a differnt RBG VGA cable same result. I can use the on screen menu only when hooked in though the RCA I tried setting it to RBG and then switching and again, nothing.

I am going to start another thread for this and maybe it is somehting that we are just missing. Please update me if you come across anything, and I will definately do the same. I am sure I have everything hooked up correctly and I tried it from both my laptop and my desktop, even tried rebooting my desktop to see if it would show the BOIS screen, no luck.

I will post the link to the thread I create here in another post.

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Software:
CFiG v1
iGuidance Plugin for CF

CarShell
Working shell for a CarPC

StopWatch
StopWatch plugin remade for centrafuse RC1

anaxagoras

I have an allbrite with a dicon controller and got it to work no problems. Interesting problem how the vga doesn't work but the rca does